


Sharpe's Target

by BlueNeutrino



Series: Sharpe's Fanfic [17]
Category: Sharpe (TV), Sharpe - All Media Types
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Heartbeats, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:07:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28316484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueNeutrino/pseuds/BlueNeutrino
Summary: Richard Sharpe shows his back to the men so that they'll see the scars and know he used to be one of them, but that isn't all he shows.
Series: Sharpe's Fanfic [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2034673
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	Sharpe's Target

**Author's Note:**

  * For [InkSiren](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkSiren/gifts).



> My good friend InkSiren wrote me several fics about Sharpe and Harper, some based on a headcanon that Sharpe has a visible heartbeat which can happen with leaner builds. I am now running with that headcanon and returning the favour. So, this fic belongs with her Sharpe's Fanfic series which I highly recommend.
> 
> TV-verse, since I watched that most recently, but I think this somewhat works with both book and TV.

Sergeant Harper knows why Lieutenant Sharpe does it—baring his back to the troops so that they’ll see the deep canyons filled with scar tissue criss-crossing his flesh and know that he once stood where they stood. But baring his back also means baring his chest, and for reasons Harper can’t quite explain at first, it makes him uncomfortable.

Until he sees that fluttering again—the one he’d first noticed in a round of football, pushing at the skin between Richard’s ribs—and realises Sharpe is teaching the men to shoot with his own heart exposed as the clearest example of a target. Musket in hand, point blank range, it would be all to easy to—

Patrick halts the thought. Of course, none of them actually would. He doubts they’ve even noticed with Richard’s back and barking orders as a distraction, but Sharpe has made enemies of Simmerson’s men, and they might. An unwanted, irrational fantasy invades his mind of Gibbons or Berry right now pointing their spyglass and lining up their sights, marking the exact spot between Richard’s ribs in which to later plunge a knife...

Gibbons and Berry aren’t here. But Lady Josefina is, and she’s watching.

“He’s a good man,” she’d later say to Harper, “with a good heart,” and Harper’s mind would stutter and read far too much into it before agreeing that Sharpe is much more of a gentleman than the bastards around them that try to claim the term.

When Richard finally collapses on the battlefield at Talavera, knuckles still white on the pole of the Eagle as a crimson gush seeps across his chest, Patrick rushes to catch him as a deep panic plucks at his own heart. His hand flies fast to that spot, already bared and vulnerable due to the damn buttons the newly-gazetted captain refuses to fasten, and the wave of relief that comes with it is almost dizzying. Richard Sharpe’s heart still thumps powerful and defiant inside him, quickening the bleeding but not the source of it.

“Major Hogan was right,” Pat remarks to the unconscious captain, “You’re a damn showoff, sir.” But the Eagle is theirs, Sharpe’s target was missed, and Harper can feel himself swelling with pride.

He looks again later, when Sharpe is lying unconscious on the ground in the field hospital with bandages crossing his chest, and is comforted by the semblance that now his friend’s heart is shielded and safe.

Then he notices the thrumming in Sharpe’s throat, another vulnerable spot where the blood beats close to skin, and reasons that God must have always meant for a heart as strong and resilient as Richard Sharpe’s to make itself known to the world.

Harper watches the pulse for a long while until Sharpe wakes. He still doesn’t say a word.


End file.
